That is the alarming take on the West Antarctic ice sheet, according to a new study released earlier this week.

Over the past quarter-century, an enormous volume of ice has melted off the sheet — and some areas are losing ice five times quicker than in the early 1990s.

“In parts of Antarctica, the ice sheet has thinned by extraordinary amounts,” lamented lead author and University of Leeds polar scientist Andy Shepherd, who penned the study for the journal American Geophysical Union.

The ice has lost 400 feet in thickness in several locales, the study revealed. The ice sheet and its glaciers are thawing from underneath as warmer sea water overheated by climate change thins it from underneath.

“Along a 1,850-mile stretch of West Antarctica, the water in front of the glaciers is too hot,” Shepherd told the Guardian. “This causes melting of the underside of the glaciers where they grind against the seabed. The melting lessens the friction and allows the glaciers then to slide more quickly into the ocean and therefore become thinner.”

The freshwater from the enormous sheets and glaciers encompassing most of the continent weakens the ice, making it unstable because the fracturing of ice chunks is reducing their mass faster than it can be gained back by snowfall.

The melting ice also adds to the rising sea levels around the world.

“Altogether, ice losses from East and West Antarctica have contributed 4.5 millimeters to global sea level rise since 1992,” said Shepherd.